Roya Nikandam

Speculum of Other Subjectivity: the Language of Self Roya Nikandam

It examines the Lacanian psychoanalysis principles underlying selected Hardy's novels Tess of the d'Urbervilles and the Mayor of Casterbridge, and underscores the hypotheses of psychoanalytic feminists such as Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray who based their theories on Jacques Lacan's signification of the symbolic order. The study applies Lacanian concepts as adopted by Kristeva and Irigaray to illustrate men's control over women and women's resistance to men's intention to objectify them. The main adopted to study Hardy's novels is the Unconscious of the Patriarchy in the Victorian Imagination. It is divided into two sections: Lacan and Feminist Psychoanalysis. The discussion will highlight faced the threat of inferiority and it explains the symbolic world of Lacan attempts to turn women into commodities. Women's power to destabilize the structures of this particular society will also be expounded by referring to the works of Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray. It will be explained that through the connection women have with semiotic language, maternity, abjection/death, and mimesis women are able to threaten the symbolic law.